Berlin – At its mechanical engineering conference, IG Metall outlined requirements for the digital future of mechanical and plant engineering. “The mechanical engineering sector must not miss the boat when it comes to the digital transformation of industry. Internet giants and IT conglomerates are already in the starting blocks, ready to use their platforms to squeeze in between mechanical engineering companies and their customers,” said Wolfgang Lemb, the IG Metall executive board member responsible for the sector, on Thursday in Berlin. In this era of digital transformation, the industry must assert its role as a global supplier of technological industrial solutions. That is why it is necessary to position itself strategically within the platform economy and to cooperate more closely with one another.
It is no longer just a matter of providing the most innovative hardware solutions. In the age of the platform economy and increasingly networked production, the challenge for the mechanical engineering sector is to maintain control over customer relationships. The example of the mobile phone market has shown how quickly internet companies—rather than hardware manufacturers—can suddenly come to dictate the terms of value creation—with negative consequences for workers.
“For IG Metall, the goal is to shape digitalization in the interests of employees. A strong culture of co-determination and a strong works council are essential prerequisites for this,” said Lemb. However, to successfully navigate the transformation, the scope for action by works councils must also be expanded—especially in smaller mechanical engineering companies—so that they can negotiate transformation processes with employers on an equal footing.
“Works councils must also be involved in matters of platform development and the latest trends in process and product digitization,” said Lemb. This, however, requires expanded participation and co-determination rights for works councils.
Dr. Jürgen Dispan, a social scientist at the IMU Institute, who presented his study on digitalization in the mechanical engineering sector—commissioned by IG Metall—at the conference, confirmed this assessment: “The German mechanical engineering sector, with its more than one million employees, is both a user and a provider of digital products and solutions. Digitalization strategies should include not only digital solutions and business models but also the internal digital networking of corporate processes with the participation of employees.”
In the course of the digital transformation, there will be a shift in employment that will not lead to a threat to jobs in the mechanical engineering sector in the coming years. “New digital offerings and the growth they enable provide an opportunity for employment in the industry to develop in a neutral to positive direction over the next few years. In the longer term, however, significant rationalization effects are certainly to be expected,” said the researcher. In addition to production work, office and information-related work will be particularly hard hit. “To cope with structural change within companies, there is a need for strong employee representation that helps shape digitalization in the interests of employees, demands training, and keeps an eye on healthy working conditions,” said Dispan.
